Soc 276: Fall 2017 Study Guide For the Final Exam
Although the review guide is organized around book chapters,
all additional readings posted on D2L, the lecture notes, and class
exercises/discussions/videos are also included. When you review, it is
imperative to understand the main points/central arguments, make connections
among concepts and definitions, theories and research findings. More specifically, the test may include but
not limited to the following items. To make your review a coherent one, instead
of revolving the central points around specific readings, I organize them
according to our weekly activities since Exam 1. You may find the relevant book
chapters from the syllabus and all the relevant reading materials at the D2L
Content modules:
Transnational employment and marriages (marriage for a
better life)
(note: according to the syllabus, this section should
include Karraker’s Chapter 5, but I moved it to next section in my ppt notes
and hence this review)
Some key points and questions:
? Meanings
of marriage for immigrant women from the Third World;
? Opportunities
and obstacles they confront;
? Global
inequality reflected in intimate migration;
? The
social nature of cross-border marriage through experiences of immigrants and
world history; social means marriage for group well-being rather than,
or in addition to, personal happiness;
? Arranged
marriage as earlier patterns of world marriage form which change according to
broader societal changes;
? Understanding
contemporary marriages from the historical perspective;
1. How do
women from poor countries marry men from rich countries reflect global
inequality?
2. What gaps
exist between dreams of migration and barriers to migration?
3. What are
purposes of Third World women marrying men from the First and Second World?For
family
4. What are
some venues for cross-border marriages to happen?
5. The
stories of migrants becoming victims and/or perpetrators and the circumstances
under which they happen.
6. Can one
rich country build fences to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country?
Why or why not?
7. How
prevalent is arranged marriage around the world? Has that only been the
phenomenon among non-Western societies according world history?80%; existed in
the West as well—marriage as social.
8. What was
marriage designed for? Political alliances, production and reproduction.
9. Are
love-based marriages happier compared to arranged marriages? How?No.
10. What is
the relationship between marriage and class?Marriageas the privilege of the
rich, not a matter of choice.
11. How do we
understand low marriage rates among African American families?Unaffordability,
not attitudes.
Love displaced-transnational employment and migrant mothers
(and fathers)
Some key points:
? Class
in global context seen through, for example, care work;
? Work-family
conflict on the global scale;
? Gender
inequality as part of work-family conflict;
? Work-family
linkage (i.e. work and family affect each other) across borders;
? Immigrant
families’ experiences shaped by national policies.
1. What are
characteristics of transnational employment in ongoing globalization?
2. How may
transnational employment pattern further contribute to inequality between rich
and poor countries?
3. How is
the domestic employment treated different from other types of employment under
globalization?
4. What are
global care chains?How does this reflect inequality between Third World women
in transnational domestic employment and First and Second World middle-class
career women. And how is this created and developed?
5. How do transnational
domestic workers help fill gender gaps in middle-class families in the West?
6. How does
transnational domestic work affect female domestic workers’ well-being and
their families?
7. Is Third
World women in transnational domestic employment a win-win situation for these
women and their families as well as middle-class women in rich countries? How
so?
8. How do
you understand the persistence of gendered division of labor at home?
9. What are
challenges to women from both rich and poor countries?
10. How does
neoliberalism help generate poverty in Third World countries, using the
Philippines as an example (see Ligaya Lindio-McGovern’s article on D2L)?
Gender relations
Some key points:
1. Multilayered patriarchy in non-Western societies (e.g
Zuo’s study on traditional Chinese families) ;
2. Two-sidedness in gender (in)equality in both in
non-Western and Western families;
3. Social construction theory of gender theory;
4. Social construction of power theories.
Questions:
1. What is a
multilayered patriarchy? How does it work?
2. According to the authors, Western migrant women tend to
lose marital power when marrying a non-Western man (e.g. the Anglo-Indian
couple, p. 124)? How does this happen? Why so?
3. The authors also observe that non-Western migrant women
gain power when marrying a man from Western societies? How does this work? How
do you explain this?
4. How do women and men of immigrants select their mates?
How does gender play out?
5. What is social construction of gender theory? How do you
explain gendered behavior and relations described in BB, Chapter 7?
6. What is social construction of family power? Dependency
theory and cultural perspectives
Based on Zuo’s article on family patriarchy in traditional
China (on D2L):
1. How many
layers of family patriarch were there in traditional China?
2. Did the
man of a junior couple have power when living with his parents?
3. What was
the nature of the man’s mother’s power? What was her position in the
patriarchal family system?
4. How did
the man’s mother gain power in her life course?
5. What did
the Chinese case study tell us about the relationship between generation- and
gender-based patriarchy? In other words, how do we understand male power in a
family system where there are two-layered patriarchy?
Transnational family networks
Some key points:
? Problems
with linear thinking of modernization;
? Recognition
of various paths to modernization and various type so modernization;
? Family-run
enterprises and family relations.
1. What is
modernization? What are some of modernization assumptions and arguments?
2. What do
family enterprises say about the modernization path?
3. What do
family relations look at in family enterprises compared with non-business
families?
4. How do we
understand unequal family relations in family enterprises?
Intimate is global: the model of distant love
Some key points:
? Ways
in which globalization hits home (i.e. how we experience globalization in our
domestic lives);
? Important
global issues that affect family lives, such as global inequality, cross-border
communication, national frontiers, national legal systems, etc.;
? Impact
of structural adjustment imposed by IMF/World Bank on debtor nations on family
well-being; Please first understand what structural adjustment is;
? Deterioration
of working class families in the U.S. in the midst of globalization, addressed
by Stephanie Coontz, an American historian and sociologist (see her article in
the module “Intimate is Global.”
Questions:
1. In which
ways may families experience inequality among family members from different
countries?
2. In which
ways may immigrant families experience inequality within the family?
3. Does race
make also make a difference?
4. How may
global inequality challenge contemporary Western definition of family, using
the example of German husband and a Thai wife?
5. How do
you reflect on Section 4 “Beyond National Law”?
8. What are
challenges faced by contemporary families?
9. What are
global policies concerning family well-being?
10. What did
IMF and the World Bank do to Third World debt nations? Impact on their family
well-being?
11. Which
countries in EU do not see child care as a private, family responsibility?
12. Why does Karraker
think family rights are human rights?
13. What is
Marsha A. Freeman’s argument about family issues as human rights issues (see
Karraker, pp.212-219).
International violence and families
Some key points:
? Various
ways in which international violence impacts on families;
? Linkages
between globalization and violence;
? Ways
in which families show their resilience to International violence
Questions:
1. What are
“international systems of oppression” that Karraker refers to?
2. What are
forms of international violence? How do they affect family lives?
3. Karraker
does not see a direct connection between globalization and war (p. 130); the
instructor disagrees. What evidence did the instructor show in class that
confirms connections between globalization and war?
4. Does
international violence affect your family life? If so, then, how?
5. Ways in
which colonialism is related to world conflicts today?
6. How does
war exacerbate crimes such as sex/human trafficking?
7. What is
the nature of rape and sexual slaves? Against women or humanity?
8. Ways in
which war affects marriage and marital relations?
9. How do
families and individuals caught in the war show their resilience?
10. Jannifer
Blank’s article attached to Karraker, Chapter 4, pp. 151-155.
11. Why do
some young people join ISIS?
